Entertainer Ranger Nick demonstrates the art of camp oven cooking at Beef Australia 2015 in Rockhampton, central Queensland. It is the biggest beef cattle event in the country.

A professional camp oven chef says the cooking technique has seen a resurgence in Australia during the last 15 years.

Entertainer Nicholas Small, or Ranger Nick, is the definition of a bushie; speaking with his distinctive Aussie twang and dipping his hat with a pair of BBQ tongs as he tells bush ballads.

This week he is sharing his passion for bush cooking at Beef Australia 2015 in Rockhampton, the country's biggest beef industry event.

Ranger Nick said you have to be creative when it comes to camp oven cooking.

"You get out into areas like Windorah and places like that where there is not a lot of wood on the ground and you end up using cow poo," he said.

"There's quite interesting ways that you can generate heat."

More than 85,000 guests are expected to attend Beef Week, with about 1,000 international delegates eager to see how Australian breeders do business.

It is also an opportunity for them to catch a glimpse of Aussie life.

Much of what Nick said was with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek, a technique that seems to get a smile from even the most unlikely of audience members.

"All the recipes I have put together are very traditional and the type of things that were hitting the table when I was growing up, so they're made from fresh produce which is how I keep such a girlie figure," he joked.

"Some of my favourites are roasted silverside with vegetables, my old man's stew that is done with dumplings, and of course, for dessert my mum's treacle bum pudding."

He said the art of camp oven cooking grew in popularity in Australia during the late 1990s with the start of the Australian Camp Oven Festival in Millmerran, southern Queensland.

"It's taken off in such a big way now with 'caravaners', grey nomads, people do it in their backyards," he said.

One of a family of 10, Nick said cooking was a skill he learned watching his siblings and parents.

Over the years he has honed his skills and said location plays a large part in how a meal is cooked because different timbers produce varying degrees of heat.

"Moving from south-west Queensland into the Northern Rivers areas [in NSW], I was very spoilt with the woods and timbers that were out there," he said.

"Now I've had to actually re-teach myself different styles of cooking around the fire.

"I've had to retrain myself to keep the heat because the coals go black."

As for why he loves the camp oven over a traditional home cooked meal?

"Just to take a piece of roast meat, place it in the camp oven and roast it in the fire without any seasoning like people seem to do in a conventional oven to get it to taste good, the flavours just seem to draw out of the camp oven," he said.

Nick is one of the celebrity chefs doing demonstrations at Beef Australia 2015, every day at 10am, 12pm and 2pm.

Even before cases of strawberry sabotage crippled sales and cost the industry millions of dollars, Australian growers were despairing over dumping tonnes of perfectly good fruit that was too small or odd-shaped to find a market.